Just waiting for the breakthrough to come.
That appeared to be how Leeds United played the second half, and indeed the whole game against Millwall on Tuesday night, even after they had fallen two goals behind. At least that’s what 34-year-old midfielder Pablo Hernandez had to say on the matter.
Speaking to the club website after the game, the Spaniard pointed out that things didn’t exactly go to plan, particularly in the first half against tough opposition, but that the team carried on with the same philosophy and mentality to force the breakthrough:
“It is great because we showed on the pitch, if we play 100 per cent we can win in every game. In the second half I played better, I had more contact with the ball- in the first half Millwall were very compact and we had very little space. It’s not easy when your opponent defends with all 11 players in one half of the pitch, but this team is ready to face every style of our opponents and we showed very good character.”
However what Hernandez points out about Millwall in the first half perfectly illustrates the point that I was making yesterday, is that a lot of that result came down to luck that the Lions decided to change things up rather than what we did as a team.
We were lucky that they decided to invite pressure on themselves during the second half, because then it just became a point of once they broke through the defences, the rest of the goals would follow, as they eventually did.
But Leeds can’t keep scraping results like this. As Hernandez says, if the team is ready to face every style of opponent, then they had better start showing it and not fall behind so early in games. It’s why I’ve spoken before about the team’s goal difference and how vital it could be at the end of the season.
And if it takes a goal against us to kick the team into playing 100 percent, then we could be in for a few more bad results between now and May.